One full week without sugar! I still eat fruit, but if it isn’t naturally derived sugar, I aint eating it! May have to end my love affair with bananas because natural or not, they are high in sugar.
My living room has turned into my workspace until this summer when I have lots of space and equipment.
QUESTION BRIDGE. Non-instagram photos coming soon. This was an amazing event. I am very grateful that Question Bridge gave me the opportunity to document their Brooklyn events. I’ve learned a lot and met some awesome people. I need to sit and fully write about it. It may not happen this week, but I will share photos this week.
(Source: fucksquirrels, via manufactoriel)
Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening…Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.Alice Walker
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.Anais Nin
PATRICIA COFFIE
Cancer of Silence 24” by 24” C-print 2008
(via blackcontemporaryart)
For the fifth time in three years, the Museum for African Art has been forced to delay opening its new home at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue, in East Harlem, as it continues to work to raise the money to finish the project.
More churches. See part I of this series here. I like where this is all going. I know I must look a bit strange stoping at every church I see to take a picture. I can’t imagine what this looks like when there 100s of photos.
Today in Brooklyn. Plant Nursery and Fruit Stands.
Be not like those who forgot Allah, so he made them forget their own souls…Holy Quran (59:19)
(Source: rzvzee, via labnehwazaatar)
(via Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families : NPR)
Nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are being removed from their homes every year, sometimes under questionable circumstances. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is largely failing to place them according to the law. The vast majority of native kids in foster care in South Dakota are in nonnative homes or group homes, according to an NPR analysis of state records.
Years ago, thousands of Native American children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools, where the motto of the schools’ founder was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Children lost touch with their culture, traditions and families. Many suffered horrible abuse, leaving entire generations missing from the one place whose future depended on them — their tribes.
In 1978, Congress tried to put a stop to it. They passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, which says except in the rarest circumstances, Native American children must be placed with their relatives or tribes. It also says states must do everything it can to keep native families together.
But 32 states are failing to abide by the act in one way or another, and, an NPR investigation has found, nowhere is that more apparent than in South Dakota.
“Cousins are disappearing; family members are disappearing,” said Peter Lengkeek, a Crow Creek Tribal Council member. “It’s kidnapping. That’s how we see it.”
State officials say they have to do what’s in the best interest of the child, but the state does have a financial incentive to remove the children. The state receives thousands of dollars from the federal government for every child it takes from a family, and in some cases the state gets even more money if the child is Native American. The result is that South Dakota is now removing children at a rate higher than the vast majority of other states in the country.
Native American families feel the brunt of this. Their children make up less than 15 percent of the child population, yet they make up more than half of the children in foster care.
